doclifter

doclifter is a command-line software for GNU/Linux operating systems, created for users who want to transcode man, ms, mandoc, me, as well as mm files to the XML-DocBook document format. The application is open source and freely downloadable on any Linux distribution.

Features at a glance

The software can be easily described as a small CLI (Command-line Interface) utility that can transcode nroff, troff and groff documentation to DocBook XML (Extensible Markup Language) markup. In addition, the software can parse mandoc, man, ms, TkMan, as well as me page sources.

doclifter also features structural analysis for supported documents. It has been designed from the ground up to automatically recognize regular troff-markup cliches. The software requires no installation and runs on any Linux kernel-based operating system, supporting 32 and 64-bit computer platforms.

Getting started with doclifter

You can easily used the doclifter program on your distribution. Just download the latest release from either Softoware or the project’s website (see the homepage link at the end of the article), save it somewhere on your computer, and use your favorite archive manager utility to unpack it.

After successfully extracting the contents of the archive, access the location where you’ve extracted the archive file from a Terminal app (e.g. cd /home/softoware/doclifter-2.15) and run the ‘doclifter’ command to use the program. Please read the project’s documentation to learn about available command-line options that you can use with doclifter at http://www.catb.org/~esr/doclifter/doclifter.html.

Under the hood

A quick look under the hood of the doclifter application will tell us that it has been written entirely in the Python programming language. doclifter is a cross-platform software that supports GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

What is new in this release:

• The usual minor improvements for strange edge cases.
• Work around bugginess of --postvalid in recent xmllint versions.
• Cleanup for new version of pylint.

What is new in version 2.13:

• Simplify and improve ntroff expression evaluation.

What is new in version 2.12:

• New logic prevents spurious warnings from .in +N just before .nf.
• Many more instances of .ta are now automatically handled.
• Multi-file compilation was broken, is now repaired.

What is new in version 2.10:

• Trailing comments after table rows are now preserved (example: matherr(3)).
• Support for some previously missing groff extension glyphs was added.
• Handling of .Bd/.Be in mdoc was improved.

What is new in version 2.9:

• Handle foojzs pages better. Interpret some cases of .rj.
• Recognize "Feature Test" as a function synopsis ender.
• Handle m, r and d troff conditionals.
• Process .ti with positive indent into around the following line.
• Support all mdoc special-character strings.
• Improved recognition of program listings.
• Brown-paper-bag bug in processing of mdoc

What is new in version 2.8:

• Fix a bug in command-synopsis parsing pointed out by Tom Browder Lifts 97% of 11029 pages in a full Ubuntu Precise Pangolin release.

What is new in version 2.7:

• Improvement for lynxprep handling by Jon Vyse.

What is new in version 2.6:

• Clean up glitches revealed by pychecker.
• Fix buggy interpretation of ms .AI macro.
• Mab TBL "box" attribute to Docbook frame="border".

What is new in version 2.4:

• eqn markup is now handled if the eqn -TMathml switch produces results. Bell Labs or Berkeley meaning of .P1 is dispatched to depending on whether .P2 is present. Added -w option for strict portability checking. Fedora bug 220736 fixed. All troff glyphs are now mapped (added bracket-pile characters, yogh, hooked-o, and underdot). You are now warned of sequences that look like glyphs but can't be mapped. Table handling for mdoc pages has been much improved. Tests for requests that can't be turned into structure are stricter. Appropriate cases of \o are now translated into Latin-1 and Latin-2 letters with accents. Inline ad-hoc tables made with .ta and literal tabs are now lifted. Groff extended escapes $* and $@ are now handled. Speed optimizations so it's about 30% faster, and a profiling switch on manlifter. Rudimentary DocBook V5 translation, but inclusions and character entities are iffy and untested. Lifts 94% of 11863 pages in a full Ubuntu Lucid Lynx install.

Requirements:

• Python